Rolf Ericson with the Metropole Orchestra: Beautiful Love

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Sweden, which has produced an exceedingly large number of world–class Jazz musicians for a country its size, was home to one of the finest of them all, trumpeter Rolf Ericson, whose long and varied career ended with his passing in June 1997. Ericson, an impassioned bop–based improviser with a crystalline tone and irreprovable technique, performed with a veritable who’s who of Jazz greats in Sweden and abroad, listing on his extensive resumé such well–known names as Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Glenn Miller, Charlie Barnet, Dexter Gordon, Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Charles Mingus, Harold Land and fellow countrymen Lars Gullin and Arne Domnérus, among others. A sought–after studio musician while living for many years in Germany, he played there with the Clarke–Boland, NDR, Rolf Kuhn and Sender Freies big bands and many smaller groups. These recordings with the large–scale Metropole Orchestra were made during several of his periodic visits to the Netherlands between 1980–89. They consist mainly of time–tested standards presented in the customary Metropole manner — lush string arrangements alternating with more pared–down and swinging charts. Ericson is at home in either framework, his reliable trumpet (on seven tracks) or flugel (on six) as romantic or brash as needed. He’s the only soloist, and the charts by Rob Pronk, Jerry van Rooyen, Rik Elings, Bora Rokovic and Lex Jasper are designed to showcase him in a number of picturesque settings. They succeed well, as does Ericson in proving again, if any proof were needed, that he was a remarkably gifted trumpeter who should be warmly remembered by Jazz fans all over the world.

Track listing: But Beautiful; Get Out of Town; Sambaville; Beautiful Love; If You Could See Me Now; I Love You; I’m Glad There Is You; You Leave Me Breathless; Have You Met Miss Jones; I Had the Craziest Dream; You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To; You Don’t Know What Love Is; You’ve Changed (51:52).